This is a discussion on Alternator Whine Fixed! within the Interior Mods forums, part of the Tech & Modifying & General Repairs category; Hello fellow frustrated stereo installers!
Well I had some pretty miserable alternator whine. It was constant and got higher in ...

Alternator Whine Fixed!

Hello fellow frustrated stereo installers!

Well I had some pretty miserable alternator whine. It was constant and got higher in pitch as I accelerated. I tried re-grounding down to bare metal, new ground points, re-grounded the battery, tried different RCAs, etc. And nothing worked. Here is what fixed it for me...not saying it will work for everyone but it did the trick for me when nothing else would. My alternator whine was most prevalent in the front left speaker with some whine from the right.

I had purchased a PAC ground loop isolator that I tried putting on the amp and all it did was make the system sound weak...making the "noise" quieter but just because it was quieting the whole system down.

After grounding each RCA and re-grounding the deck and still not fixing the problem, I tried putting the GLI (ground loop isolator) onto the 2 front speaker RCAs, this got rid of the whine, without making my system weaker in the process. It sounded exactly the same, minus the whine/noise.
However, when I put the deck back into the hole in the dash the "noise" came back. Here is the quick summary...by taking all of the excess RCA cables and isolating them from all the other speaker wire (by zip tying each group and then wrapping them in closed cell foam and putting them as far away from each other as possible) it eliminated the alternator whine completely.

I assume that the GLI helped with some ground loop in the RCAs and separating the cables helped remove the interference they were causing each other. So if all else fails and you are getting close to going into a black-out rage from your alternator whine, give it a shot. Doing this dropped my blood pressure by about 40 points every time I am in my mREX.

Thanks, I thought I should just throw it out there. Yeah, we will have to wait and see about the sticky-worthiness haha. Hopefully, this wasn't just a weird issue with my car and it helps out some other people.

Actually all the audio geeks out there pretty much know this. It's kinda common knowledge. I always run my power wires,speaker wires and RCA's away from each other through out the car. Also this is where quality RCA cables and thicker jacketed power cable are worth the money you pay for them. I also over size my grounds to the system components,make them as short as possible and bolt them to the biggest piece of metal I can find or directly to the frame. Unibody cars are a pain to get proper grounding on sometimes.

Yeah, I know how the the power and RCAs need to be separated during the install (I did my homework on installs). I had my power wire running on the right side of the car and RCAs on the left. So that's not what I was getting at. It was just the excess RCA cables being near the speaker wires behind the deck that was causing the problem. I thought it was weird that them just being near each other behind the dash would cause the problem, I've never had any noise from something like that before. So yeah I figure if all else fails, you should try and isolate the RCAs from the speaker wire behind the deck. Or maybe my car or deck is just weird and it was a flukey fix. Either way, I'll take it.

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